PC Looting Progression Plan

[SquirrelTeamSix]

I would save my best weapons for horde nights, but, with the current loot system you get more than enough guns and gun parts that you'd never really be without one after the first week or so.

Also fair, but to that point, items being gone forever doesnt mean much when you have 9 more in a box.

 

[Kalen]

Also fair, but to that point, items being gone forever doesnt mean much when you have 9 more in a box.

Sure it does, because those 9 items are not all equal.   To me, the best part about it is that it opens up the ability to have good items available early game (it should be very rare, though) which you can't do when the item will last forever.

 

[Laz Man]

That wouldn't really help, since a 40% (or 10%) repaired item in this game is just as effective as a 100% repaired item.   So you'd still have your item forever, you'd just need to repair a little more often until your attribute gets high.

Edit:  What could work, though, is having your relevant attribute give you a chance of repairing an item without it degrading.  Meaning that an item would last longer if you were skilled in repairing it.

Or we can take a page out of the devs book and reduce resource costs based on perk levels.  This would only work though if the number of materials for repairs increased. (e.g. if it took parts for repairs instead of kits).  For example, unperked it would cost 10 rifle parts to repair a rifle.  Perked it would only take 5.  This doesn't fix the issue with having no permanent degradation, but it does extend the looting game by adding more upkeep to higher tier weapons.

 

[Boidster]

For what it's worth, I made a "Loot Lottery" modlet that adds a tiny chance for higher-tier loot in standard probability tables. Ought to affect most normal lootables - crates and whatnot. Will not affect quest loot nor zombie bag drops.

 

[Roland]

Also fair, but to that point, items being gone forever doesnt mean much when you have 9 more in a box.

The fact that we have people strenuously pleading with Madmole to never implement degradation or they’ll probably never play again belies that comment. To some it means so much that they will just keep their best item as a trophy and never use it....

 

[Laz Man]

The fact that we have people strenuously pleading with Madmole to never implement degradation or they’ll probably never play again belies that comment. To some it means so much that they will just keep their best item as a trophy and never use it....

item degradation would probably change the game from a 30 to 40 hour affair to to a 60 to 80 hour affair which is fine if we were at gold right now but given the devs want to add more content to the game, they are probably hesitant to reintroduce something that will take away player time from experiencing all of the content they have planned.  Believe it or not, there is a saturation point for some players and it appears the dev's are laser focused on squeezing their full offerring into that window before they expand on any existing system that is already in the game. (just a guess)

 

[Boidster]

And modding out repair kits (or, voluntarily not using them if you are as iron-willed as Roland is) gets close enough IMO anyway. Lower quality items wear out faster, higher quality items are more durable, as already coded. The diamond blade mod becomes quite useful. Until the iron tools are pretty common in loot, that stone stuff is looking pretty good, eh?

I need to talk to my co-op partner about whether he'd be down with a no-repair game. I wonder if the game supports recursive recipies. As a joke, I'd make the Repair Kit recipe require 2 Repair Kits as inputs.

 

[Kalen]

And modding out repair kits (or, voluntarily not using them if you are as iron-willed as Roland is) gets close enough IMO anyway. Lower quality items wear out faster, higher quality items are more durable, as already coded. The diamond blade mod becomes quite useful. Until the iron tools are pretty common in loot, that stone stuff is looking pretty good, eh?

I need to talk to my co-op partner about whether he'd be down with a no-repair game. I wonder if the game supports recursive recipies. As a joke, I'd make the Repair Kit recipe require 2 Repair Kits as inputs.

Yeah, I've already decided that my next game will be a no repair game also.   Except for vehicles.

I'll try out your modlet at the same time.... thanks!

 

[Roland]

I’m not so Iron-Willled as all that. Twice now I said screw-it and just repaired because I gave into convenience. It was just my stone spear though...I could’ve crafted a duplicate. But yeah, I need it modded out to stay honest. 
 

Pros of no repair are definitely being more excited for duplicate loot and also treasuring mods and books that increase durability. Those things are useless in the default game when you have forever durability thanks to repair kits

Cons of no repair are having to switch out mods. Really....that’s it. It is Madmole’s biggest objection and I have to admit that it is a PITA.
 

But just make mod attachments permanent and that solves that....

 

[Laz Man]

I’m not so Iron-Willled as all that. Twice now I said screw-it and just repaired because I gave into convenience. It was just my stone spear though...I could’ve crafted a duplicate. But yeah, I need it modded out to stay honest. 
 

Pros of no repair are definitely being more excited for duplicate loot and also treasuring mods and books that increase durability. Those things are useless in the default game when you have forever durability thanks to repair kits

Cons of no repair are having to switch out mods. Really....that’s it. It is Madmole’s biggest objection and I have to admit that it is a PITA.
 

But just make mod attachments permanent and that solves that....

Unless weapon durability is so piss poor the player has to change out mods every battle or so i doubt its really that big of a deal....

Altho I remember many alphas ago there was a time an SMG would break so fast it was a royal pain to upkeep lol...Like 1 or 2 full mags and it was repair time....

 

[Kalen]

But just make mod attachments permanent and that solves that....

Thats what I'd do 

 

[Boidster]

Twice now I said screw-it and just repaired because I gave into convenience. It was just my stone spear though...I could’ve crafted a duplicate.

I figured the no-repair rule only applied to the kits. But I guess that really only would work if the game had no quality levels for primitive items, AS GOD INTENDED.

 

[SquirrelTeamSix]

Unless weapon durability is so piss poor the player has to change out mods every battle or so i doubt its really that big of a deal....

Altho I remember many alphas ago there was a time an SMG would break so fast it was a royal pain to upkeep lol...Like 1 or 2 full mags and it was repair time....

Later game stage horde nights I tend to have to repair a gun once or twice through it. Swapping mods during a horde would be really annoying.

 

[Roland]

I figured the no-repair rule only applied to the kits

You're the devil. My will is now weakened further...

 

[Solomon]

IMO, a good degradation system would allow you to repair an item a limited number of times... each time it gets repaired its quality suffers.

I get why people wouldn't like that.... but I feel like, in a survival game, you shouldn't be able to find an item and keep it forever.

Item degradation is one of the core points of the game Dying Light and you can find countless people who are posting the most meta ways to avoid that feature completely, its a game where you can always find better gear and even in that case people dont like the idea that stuff just breaks and leaves them with nothing.

Take a look at his edits.  Its been a few days since I looked.  It looked like he removed all the gamestage gates on all items that had them and gave a flat 4% at at level 0.

Without item degradation its basically 4% RNG I win button.  Why people think that is fun is beyond me...

Because its true actual randomity, in games where you dont have the gameplay made around the idea that the player has to create everything for themselves most of the looting excitement comes from not knowing what to expect. This mod makes sure that you can find from the most basic stone tool to a nailgun in a box, every loot is new and exciting.

Literally the only thing i would change about the mod is to limit the tiers so i cant just find T6 gear on day 1 but other than that i enjoy that i really have no idea what will be in a lootbox.

 

[Roland]

Unless weapon durability is so piss poor the player has to change out mods every battle or so i doubt its really that big of a deal....

Altho I remember many alphas ago there was a time an SMG would break so fast it was a royal pain to upkeep lol...Like 1 or 2 full mags and it was repair time....

You'd think, but your brain seems to erase all that time you happily used the thing and links together all the times you had to switch mods over and pretty soon you just feel like that's all you remember doing. It's kind of like when your spouse doesn't remember all the times you did the dishes and only seems to notice when you left that dish in the sink. My go to excuse is "I'm letting it soak first!"

 

[Solomon]

And modding out repair kits (or, voluntarily not using them if you are as iron-willed as Roland is) gets close enough IMO anyway. Lower quality items wear out faster, higher quality items are more durable, as already coded. The diamond blade mod becomes quite useful. Until the iron tools are pretty common in loot, that stone stuff is looking pretty good, eh?

I need to talk to my co-op partner about whether he'd be down with a no-repair game. I wonder if the game supports recursive recipies. As a joke, I'd make the Repair Kit recipe require 2 Repair Kits as inputs.

Or if you are good enough with modding you could make items need themselves to be repaired.

Essentially make sure that you take out parts of a working AK47 to repair your favorite AK47. This would probably be more immmersion fitting to cobble together weapons than straight up just removing the ability to repair.

 

[Kalen]

Item degradation is one of the core points of the game Dying Light and you can find countless people who are posting the most meta ways to avoid that feature completely, its a game where you can always find better gear and even in that case people dont like the idea that stuff just breaks and leaves them with nothing.

I'm not sure I'd use this argument.... people are constantly posting ways to avoid the 7 day horde but I don't think we should remove that!

I kid.

 

[Roland]

Item degradation is one of the core points of the game Dying Light and you can find countless people who are posting the most meta ways to avoid that feature completely, its a game where you can always find better gear and even in that case people dont like the idea that stuff just breaks and leaves them with nothing.

Proof that developers really need to protect players from themselves...

Because its true actual randomity, in games where you dont have the gameplay made around the idea that the player has to create everything for themselves most of the looting excitement comes from not knowing what to expect. This mod makes sure that you can find from the most basic stone tool to a nailgun in a box, every loot is new and exciting.

Literally the only thing i would change about the mod is to limit the tiers so i cant just find T6 gear on day 1 but other than that i enjoy that i really have no idea what will be in a lootbox.

I'm sure it is exciting. It also isn't the rarity that many people were claiming that they would be happy with. Turns out that "I would be happy as long as there was a very very rare chance of finding a great gun" is actually "I'm loving finding the good stuff right away again". Why are you willing to have T6 gear fenced off from Day 1 but not taking it a few steps further? How do you know that there isn't someone else who will uninstall if there is zero chance at T6 gear on Day 1?

I'm sure they would answer your post with "I would be happy as long as there was a very very rare chance of finding a T6 gun"

I really am for a rare chance at good guns as long as that is paired with degradation so that whatever you find in the first week isn't a golden ticket to the rest of the game. You talk about the excitement of getting that Blue Steel Mace on day 2 but then fail to mention the pointlessness of opening chests and getting brown, orange, yellow, and green Steel Maces, Baseball bats, and wooden clubs for days 3 on. And when I say rare chance I mean you might get a yellow iron pickaxe from a car during the first week once every five play throughs. Super rare.  Not 4%.

4% was vomiting rarity and based on the number of rant threads about vomiting, nobody felt 4% was particularly rare at all...

 

[Boidster]

This mod makes sure that you can find from the most basic stone tool to a nailgun in a box, every loot is new and exciting.

I suppose if it were combined with flat non-scaled randomness in which zombies spawn in biomes, hordes, and POIs - meaning at GS 4 you might get an Arlene sleeper or a Demolisher sleeper; random! - then it could be fun. Otherwise, to me, it's just a speed run to the winning gear set. I don't know of any other game which has the concept of item levels/tiers/quality and which also allows you to find any weapon of any level/tier at any time. Borderlands and The Division are the two in my own past playlist which were the most loot-heavy and neither allowed that at all.

But a person with a different play style, or different endorphin triggers, could absolutely have fun finding an M-60 in the first week and basically never having to worry about any zombie in the game ever again. I could have fun with that, once, to do the speed run.

Or if you are good enough with modding you could make items need themselves to be repaired.

Hmm...I wonder how good you'd need to be really. Repair is just an attribute of the item I think, and it ought to be relatively straightforward to find any item with a repair setting and replace it with the name of the item itself. I may have a new project...